Lolette Guthrie, O’Neal Jones, and Pringle Teetor each work in radically different media but all continue pushing the boundaries of technique and inspiration in a new show titled Meditations, which opens September 24th at the Hillsborough Gallery of Arts.
The daughter of a painter, Lolette Guthrie says she has been painting for as long as she can remember. “Painting is in my blood,” she says. “It’s something I need to do.”
Her work focuses on contemporary and abstract landscape paintings in oils or pastels. “To me the concentrated stillness of making and manipulating marks on paper or canvas is a form of meditation,” Guthrie explains. “All of my work is a kind of meditation.” Guthrie says that regardless of whether her work is abstract or representational, she tries to convey the essence of an image and create exciting, thought-provoking visual metaphors that celebrate the beauty and diversity of the world around us - and evoke a psychological reaction in the viewer.
Woodworker O’Neal Jones says he likes to explore the possibilities for artistry in wood. “While using traditional techniques for precision joinery, I use minimal latticework, also known as kumiko, to portray geometric shapes, repeating patterns, and impressionistic ideas from nature,” Jones explains. “The space within a frame, or even an imagined frame, becomes my palette. I try to portray the essential quality of an idea with the least quantity of material.” Jones says he enjoys making the simple become complex when shaping a thought with a piece of wood. “Simplicity of form and beauty of construction are important goals in each piece of furniture and wall art I make,” Jones adds.
“Working with molten glass is very physical,” says Pringle Teetor, which is part of the medium’s allure for her. “Both the fun and frustration of working with glass is that it doesn’t always do what you want it to do,” she says, adding, “a group of pieces I made, called "Chromatics," came about from a piece that went wrong in the final spin out of a bowl.” Earlier in the year, Teetor was able to get a strong assistant for a few days to help her produce complicated pieces that she hopes to do more of in future. The pieces involved rolling up her previously made murrini (colored patterns made in long rods of glass that are revealed when cut in cross-sections) into larger three-part pieces, all assembled hot on the blowpipe. The technique of assembling such pieces is called incalmo, invented by 16th century Italian glass makers who wanted to make several colored sections of glass look like one piece. “There are several pieces of incalmo with murrini in the new show,” Teetor says.
An opening reception for Meditations will be held at the Hillsborough Gallery of Arts on Friday, September 28th, from 6-9 p.m. The Hillsborough Gallery of Arts is located in the Mercantile Building at 121 North Churton Street, in Hillsborough, NC. For more information, visit the gallery Website at www.hillsboroughgallery.com.
